->Download the live sets here.<-

Last week I played two live shows for Summer Sounds Vol 2.

The first set was live to web via USTREAM on Thursday the 19th of August and was part of a promotion campaign for the main event the following Sunday the 22nd.

Since I was going to do a relatively short set at Summer Sounds (40 mins) I decided it might be cool to split a 90 minute set over the two occasions; play the first half live to web and play the second half at the main event.

It worked well but I had to make some minor adjustments to the set in real time because Summer Sounds is not strictly a Techno crowd and I decided to ride it out for quite a while in the intro to the second set. DJ Wada set the tone perfectly (as always) but I felt the need to just get a groove riding — to build some trust with the audience — and I feel it worked extremely well. I used a rolling vocal sample and some hypnotic drums vs droning synths, holding and building tension and then twisting everything into some large wobbly bass lines and intense breakdowns and breakups.

I have also started experimenting with the idea of an alias — Akatokuro — for my more minimal excursions so as an introduction a lot of the tracks featured in the Webstream are from this new project.

For the first time in a while I am really happy with the flow of the sets, I feel more focused and on target this time around, it helps immensely that I introduced software control via iPad to the controller set up and I simplified everything else to the bare essentials — simple is best (not to mention destroying one of my main controllers during rehearsals.)

I had a fantastic time, big thanks to DJ Tamaki Maruta for getting me to and from the venue, and promoter Shinoki Takeyoshi for organizing the web stream and booking me to play.

Last and certainly not least, a huge thanks to everyone who came to the event and /or logged onto the live show on the web. Your support, your moving bodies and your smiling faces are all really appreciated.

Links:

UStream Channel: Sancha TV

iPad Software: Griid Pro

My next release with Greta Cottage Workshop has already been kicking up dust in the UK as Sasha has been dropping it into his sets the last couple of weeks and he has given it a big thumbs up.

If you would like to be included on the promo mailing list and get a copy ahead of the release date to review or chart please contact me at info@shaneberry.com.

Here is the text from the one sheet.

Greta Cottage Workshop

Release Date: 20th August 2010

GCW015 – Shane Berry

Plugitin
Putiton
Pullitout

How to use a Turntable E.P

Fresh from remix duty for the Little White Earbuds Download of the week, Shane Berry brings his latest E.P to the table. The man takes a swerve in a slightly different direction this time around, but its still 100% Shane, and still Electronic Music from the Soul directed at the Dancefloor. We at Greta Cottage are pleased to see him going from strength to strength as an Artist, and it’s our pleasure to give him the creative freedom he deserves. (the role of the label has changed, but this remains the same)
Plugitin : Micro house wriggler from Captain Berry. Foraging harmonious repetition and digitising bass stabs deliver to industrious effect. Strutting flecks tie in with light whistles of acid taking this into a deepened Detroit flow (This has the potential to swiftly blow ones socks clean off)

Putiton : A proper psytech warbler that touchingly shares a piece of it’s ever evolving self. A maze of 303 oddities reach out with pulsating melody and slick charm. Play it out & about, then watch people wriggle with joy.

Pullitout : A sinister synthesized induced rustler encapsulates a sense of virtual empathy and analog dismissing togetherness, with interweaving filter manipulations attributing to an eventual warm spontaneous combustion. Hi tech soul from Tokyo resident Shane. Can you feel me?

This has been a Sasha Secret Weapon for a month or so, its time to spread the love.

(Jamie “winkle” Slater on the track descriptions. the man is a lunatic. It was his birthday this weekend. He is still lost in East Prawle)

Feedback

‘A very strong release – will support fully. Particularly like Pullitout’ – Sasha

Links.

Greta Cottage Workshop

On Saturday the 31st of July I will be playing at Soup in Ochiai/Shinjuku at the dashingly reasonable time of  21:30. More than enough time to come down, throw a few beers in your face holes and then still have an evening of crocheting and basket weaving at your leisurely disposal afterwards.

Seriously though Soup seems to be held in very high regards by the underground electronic music scene here in Tokyo and I must admit to having heard of it only a few days before I was booked to play.

From what I can gather it is more an art/music space than a night club and people who know it speak of it in reverant tones. From the video linked below it looks and sounds awesome and I am very excited to play there.

I’m also very interested in the visuals and sounds of Itaru Yasuda who will do a short live set before I start and then he’ll  continue to do visuals during my show.

The event is called:

都市の引力 Toshi-no Inryoku

“The gravity of the city”

7/31(Sat) 18:00-23:00 @SOUP (Ochiai)

¥1500 w/d

Time Table:

18:00 Takahashi
19:50 KeLie
21:10 Itaru Yasuda
21:30 Shane Berry
23:00 end

VJ: Itaru

Links.

Soup
The Atmosphere in Soup (Video Featuring Rom=Pari)
Itaru Yasuda

“Where many labels are content to set up camp in a certain aesthetic and stay there, Matt Densham’s Greta Cottage Workshop (supposedly a real place) is suprisingly mobile. With quality as his only concern, the Swayzak Industries team member has pushed the label to release whatever feels right, meaning sweet tech-house by Rennie Foster precedes beatdown house from Soul Keita & Nicolas Jaar, which was followed by guitar shaped atmospherics by Michael J Collins, and so on. For LWE’s latest Download of the Week, Greta favorite Shane Berry has reshaped an Aural Imbalance track from the label’s second release, turning “Think Tank” into “Thought Tanked.” Berry’s haunting take on dub sonorities bounces cowbell clanks against flowing chords and playful bass lines, leaving vocal crumbs along the path to guide listeners through its gorgeous atmosphere. We’re exceptionally proud to be the exclusive source for this exceptional tune, and for it we offer our thanks to Greta Cottage Workshop, Shane Berry and Aural Imbalance.”

A few Saturdays ago some good friends of mine dropped by my studio in Harajuku on a whim not knowing that I was preparing for a live show that evening.

I love having people over so I invited them to stick around and sit in on the final stages of my preparation session while they sipped beers and we caught up.

Even though they have seen me perform many times they were amazed at how much “behind the scenes” activity there is before I play a show so I thought I would write a bit about the process and share some ideas about it.

Bookings.

It all starts with a booking and I usually get about two a month.

I get an e-mail or a call from a promoter who asks if I am available on a certain date and if I am available we enter into a brief period of negotiations. (I deal with my own bookings because agencies in Tokyo don’t really work with foreign Techno artists residing in Japan unless you work with or are signed to a Japanese label.)

During negotiations I find out when and where the event is going to be held, how long I am expected to play, what time the promoter wants me to perform, the other DJs on the roster and the budget set aside for my fee.

Depending on my relationship with the promoter I sometimes send an Artist Booking Agreement like this one and I also attach a detailed graphic representation of my live set up so that the promoter/club has a clear idea of how much space I need, what power/audio access I need, how high I need the table/performance surface to be and that there should be no brown colored confectioneries backstage whatsoever.

Once the booking is confirmed I set about getting prepared for the show.

If I am familiar with the venue I mentally project my music into the space and imagine what I would like to play there on the night and start thinking about any tracks I have made that would work well in there.

If I’m unfamiliar with the venue I ask to meet with the promoter and visit the club a week or two before the event to listen to the house sound system and get a feel for the venue.

This is not always possible of course but I do it if I can.

Factors Contributing to Preparation.

After evaluating the performance environment I formulate a skinny outline of where I would like to start and end my live set based upon past live performance experiences, my current artistic workflow and, most simply, my scheduled time slot.

The time slot I am booked to play will heavily influence the mental map I project into the venue space because starting at 01:00 has me taking over a rather different set of energy dynamics on the dance floor than starting at 03:00 or later.

The ideal start time for me at most events in Tokyo is roughly 01:30 which is a kind of peak time here although it does vary from event to event. Most parties here start around 10:00 or 11:00 PM and things only really start picking up around 12:30.

The reason for this, among other things, is the pharmacological effect of C(2)H(5)OH.

The Tokyo club scene is predominantly fueled by this drug and after a certain time a significant proportion of people on the dance floor will most probably be having an overtly anesthetized experience. They become sluggish and that much more difficult to energise.

My music is resolutely not designed for, nor does it pander to, this numbed mental state so for me there is this golden hour and a half where everyone is buzzing and energetic but not too inebriated or tired to get involved.

Music Creation/Selection.

Although I have a few tracks that enjoy heavy rotation in my live sets I do always make sure that at least 25% of each new live set has some new material in it and, because I only play my own music productions, this means that I like to make a few new tracks for each live show.

Where a DJ goes record shopping week to week, I go into my own production backlog looking for tracks I have made or that I am currently working on that fit the mental map of what I want to play at the venue/event.

I have over 450 completely arranged songs which are in various degrees of completion and playability, and I shape and shift them as I see fit. What determines the elements I keep or change is my experience of playing a certain track in a previous live set.

Sometimes a track simply doesn’t work on the dance floor. Its main bass line is not engaging enough or the mix doesn’t translate well to the club environment or the arrangement lacks impact and drive so I will never play the song live the same way again.

For a live show of an hour and a half I need to have or prepare at least fifteen 6 minute songs. The average length of my songs is around 7 and a half minutes and I usually end up working on several new songs so I have a lot of work cut out for me.

I search for and choose songs based on the following questions.

What I would like to hear on the dance floor if I was dancing myself? Which tracks do I want to showcase? What do I want to express? What is the audience expecting?

When I find tracks that answer these questions I then set about reworking them or, if I am not satisfied with what I have found, I produce new ones to fit my desired result.

For example for one set I might be in the mood to play heavy bass lines contrasted by light melodies and and for another set I might want to go deep and moody to suit the atmosphere of the club.

My live set then becomes a kind of organic breeding ground where I can test new composites, see which sounds and elements work or don’t work on the dance floor. I can then edit the tracks at the studio after each show and improve on the strong elements of my music and weed out the weak for the next show.

Summary.

So before I do a show I have to:

Mentally project a full performance into the venue space.

Make all the music I want to play – that is create it mix it and turn it into playable audio files.

Make sure all the levels and mixes are even and that there are no noise artifacts to spoil the mix.

Load the files into the performance software I use and set them up for playback.

Arrange the live set like a musical puzzle and aim to get all the tracks to fit together in an aesthetically pleasing and cogent manner.

Rehearsal 1: Practice different combinations of audio files, loops and sound elements. I build three or several potential routes through the songs for flexibility on the dance floor. One route might go down and deep, another one might go straight on and on and another up and away, This is because sometimes, depending on feedback from the dance floor, I have to skip tracks or entire sections in order to keep a certain energy going on the dance floor.

Rehearsal 2: Timing real time effect processes – playing notes/chords, resampling, adding reverb and delay effects and additional timing actions like pushing buttons at key times, filter sweeps and other general tweaking madness.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

And you thought it was all glamour and glitz, beers and tits.

I cannot upload last night’s set at Jam Renaissance because I left the Loop Switch on and that means the entire hour’s set tried to record itself into 8 bars of the Arrange View and that means I didn’t record the set.

Woops.

I will record a short studio session instead and put that up later this week.

The Gig.

A big thank you to everyone who came down to Jam Renaissance last night. Special thanks to Rafael Chicano and Rennie Foster for their continuing support of me, my live show and my music.

Jam is a very cool space and it was refreshing to play a set not really aimed at getting people to dance. I was able to experiment with a new live set up and new template mappings. I also tried some live looping and live re-sampling and I am pleased with the results.

Technical Issues.

My controller is malfunctioning so I have had to re-work my MIDI maps to compensate for dead sliders and loose knobs and I have also reworked some of my effect routes so at some points in the set I did get a bit lost and ended up turning up that which should have been turned down and vice-versa.

I usually use the same template for every live set but rather than using a “clean” template every time I use the template of the previous live set I performed and recorded. Occasionally this means there are some artifacts from the prior live set or rehearsals that can cause some technical issues on the night.

In this case, for some reason, somewhere in rehearsal, I must have switched on the loop function to audition some audio before rendering it to HD then I forgot to do a very simple thing like setting it back to OFF.

When I sat down today to upload the live set I found that I had only recorded 8 bars of the intro and then nothing.

So I have made this quick checklist that I will use from now on to make sure that my set will be recorded and I will have some content to upload the next day as promised!

At end of Sound Check.

In Arrange View:

CLICK ON ANY TRACK

SELECT ALL > DELETE (This will erase any unwanted automation/clips that may have been accidentally recorded.)

LOOP SWITCH > OFF

STOP BUTTON > DOUBLE CLICK GLOBAL STOP BUTTON (This will set the track to play from 0:00:000.)

Immediately BEFORE starting show.

In Scene View:

STOP CLIPS (This stops any/all undesired clips from playing when you hit the Global Play or a Clip Launch Button.)

SWEEP ALL CONTROLS THROUGH 0-127 AND SET BUTTONS/FADERS TO DESIRED START POSiTIONS (When Takeover Mode is set to “pick-up” this ensures that your controls have “picked up” the positions of the device controls they are mapped to and are now ready for immediate response from the controller.)

STOP BUTTON > DOUBLE CLICK GLOBAL STOP BUTTON (This will set Live to play/record from 0:00:000.)

ARM > GLOBAL RECORD (This will not start playback it sets Live to start recording from when you launch the first clip/scene.)

LAUNCH FIRST CLIP/SCENE

KICK ASS, MELT SOME MINDS, HAVE SOME FUN

At the end of the show.

STOP BUTTON > CLICK GLOBAL STOP BUTTON.

SAVE (⌘S); SAVE (⌘S); SAVE (⌘S) (Save, save save save – This will save your set.)

MAKE SURE YOU SAVE!

EXIT LIVE.

SHUT DOWN

PACK UP

MINGLE.

Big thanks to everyone who came out to Xex and enjoyed the set.

While being an interesting space overall Xex is not the best venue volume wise. Halfway through the set I had to shave off 30% of the bass and halve the volume (on the house system) to keep the cops and neighbours at bay which changed the energy on the dancefloor immensely.

It’s part and parcel of performing in Tokyo, a city with one of the highest population densities in the world – 5655 people per km² – and it even happened to me at Womb of all places.

I had prepared for a slightly straighter and mellow (for me) set anyway so it all worked out in the end and this is probably the least technical set I have played from a live point of view. Performance wise I am not thrilled with some of the transitions, keys are wonky at times and it feels very cut and paste, although in real time it was sounding pretty good I must admit.

Line Kernel’s exclusive VJ performance added an extra dimension and colour to the set and I hope to continue collaborating with him into the near future.

We worked on the track Lupe together and as always it was fun and inspiring.

Check it out and enjoy!

In the end I had a great time as always, a big thanks to all those who came out, danced and enjoyed the show.

The perfectionist in me though is not too happy with the performance and what follows is a break down of my experience of the set, if you are interested.

Performance

First of all it was very difficult for me to take over from the Drum ‘n Bass/Live MC set before me. To drop from 160+BPM highly energised into 128 BPM deeply groovy is a massive energy shift and I feel I was just not on game enough to pull off the transition smoothly. It was one of those nights where my timing was off by milliseconds and it compounded this feeling of slippage on my side of the performance and chipped away at my overall confidence.

Second of all, the sound check was fantastically loud but when I got on to play (with the levels I had set and finalised) it was 2/3rds of the volume and the level dip was obvious enough to have the promoter come up to me to see what was going on.

I cannot turn up the volume though my system, it is why I go and do a sound check, I am the rare artist who actually attempts to adhere to the red lights and limits set by the club so I set my levels as close to the in-house guidelines and let them take up the slack and oomph.

It was only when the house master level was raised (by the promoter sneaking behind the mixing desk and pushing up the house faders) that we reached the level previously set in the sound check and then, of course, things kicked off!

The monitoring in soundbar plus is non-existent and behind the gear it was merely a wall of low end rumble not unlike standing inside a bass bin, and I have no idea how DJs mix successfully in that environment.

I only really regained feeling for the floor at about the 20 minute mark and from there was able to get into it and get the groove going.

Production

Production wise I was trying out some new compression/eq styles for this round of tracks and it didn’t seem to work very well in Soundbar at all. The sub woofer was just completely overwhelmed and the in-house system limiters must’ve dropped the audio levels to compensate, the set really didn’t have the impact I was after and from my point of view sounded awful.

DJs have a safety net in that most of the tracks they play out have been professionally mastered, so it is very clear when a sound system is at fault or something is wrong with the mixer/set-up or the track being played.

However, since I play only music I have composed and mixed I am wholly responsible for the quality of the sound and honestly sometimes I get it a little messy.

Even more annoying is that this mixing style sounds fantastic in the studio and on various non-pro systems I tried it out on – hmmm.

I appreciate everyone blaming the sound card and other factors but really my mix downs were not up to par, I always strive to push my own production skills and in this case I pushed a little to far (literally like 1.5db boosts at 50hz – what the hell was I thinking?) so it becomes a live and learn experience and all in all I am probably one of three or four people who even noticed if at all.

Also a big shout out to Nik Sliwerski (aka Motherfunker) for lending me a sound card for the evening, it was a blessing to not have to worry about my card freezing on me again.

If you have any questions or comments about my live sets fire away and I will do my best to answer them.